Been busy lately.
-Filed my taxes. (Paid $23 to federal, $100 to state)
-Filled out my FAFSA financial aid form in case I get into a business school.
Got a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign on my way to work. Pled guilty…
-Finally got my New York Driver’s License and License Plates. Got inspection done. Paid for $600 worth of mechanical repairs (new front wheel brakes, timing belt, 1 headlight). I did this for two reasons. 1) California requires a SMOG check from one of their SMOG testing stations in California for cars older than 5 years (my 2005 Accord is now older than 5 years). Reason 2 is below.
-Got excused for Jury Duty from Los Angeles because I moved. Needed the New York License to prove that I moved.
-Got an estimate invoice for 1000 CD copies of the Carnegie Hall event.
-At work, we’re going through another fund raising round.
I think a lot, but I’ve been thinking a lot more over the last two weeks than I usually do. This MBA thing is consuming the life of me and it’s been a very mentally draining process. I don’t want to be a financial analyst for House Party forever. It seems reasonable to conclude, regardless of whether it’s causal or simply correlative, that those with MBAs are more successful in reaching a higher position than those without.
The prospect of getting an MBA recently declined precipitously. I had applied to 4 schools. I got rejected by Columbia on February 2nd. Stanford’s 6% acceptance rate was good as a reject. Even though Berkeley was my best application by far, its 11% acceptance rate was pretty darn low. So I put a lot of my hope in UPenn, which I think was my 2nd best application after Berkeley and it has a 16% acceptance rate.
So the way they come up with the 16% acceptance is by interviewing about 40% of the applicants, and accepting about 40% of the interviewed applicants (40% * 40% = 16%). So I was pretty confident that I’ve gotta be in the top 50 percentile of the applicant pool, and figured I’d at least get an interview there.
But on February 4th, the first round of interview invites went out. I didn’t get one. With only two more notification days (11th and 18th), I was quite disappointed that I didn’t get one. I again took an audit that I felt really improved my candidacy.
++Good GMAT (730, which is in the 96 percentile. Is a bit higher than the average of all the top 10 schools, which is around the 720 range)
++Good enough GPA (3.70 cumulative including Community College, 5 years. 3.45 Berkeley, 2 years.)
++Good work experience
Army (Leadership. Squad leader. International work experience.)
IBM (Leadership. Global Corporate Leadership Program. Budget Coordinator of a $5 Billion division, leading over a dozen members in many cross-functional roles.)
House Party (No leadership because I’m the only financial analyst and my boss is a VP. But a ton of experience working with other executives including the VP of Business Intelligence, VP of Sales, COO, CEO, and the Chairman of the Board, driving business decisions. I think I did in 1 year what it would have taken me about 5-7 years to do in IBM.)
++Good extracurriculars
COLLEGE:
SEO (Leadership. Lead campus recruiter, increased applications by 17%)
Fellowship in Christ, Berkeley
TaeKwonDo (Leadership)
POST COLLEGE:
Milal Missionary Choir (Leadership. Play the violin at Carnegie Hall and bi-weekly missions)
Move Inc. (Leadership. Mentor a high school student, summer programs committee).
“Think Fridays” (Leadership. Founder)
++Good reasons to go to MBA school
I want to go to a different industry.
I want to become a successful executive
I will learn much more in 2 years of MBA school than 2 more years at House Party. (Although I’ve learned a ton in the last 16 months, I can’t imagine learning that much over the next 2 years)
I’ve only got a financial experience. I need to get more exposure to operations.
++Awards
Soldier of the Quarter Award (Leadership. Given to 1 out of 1600 soldiers by Commander of Combined Joint Task Forces – Horn of Africa)
Army Achievement Medal (Leadership. Led an element of 180 soldiers as a guidon bearer. Class valedictorian.)
IBM Case Competition – 1st Place (Leadership. Led a team against 3 other teams in the Global Corporate Leadership Program)
IBM Case Competition – 1st Place (Competed against 23 other financial analysts)
I didn’t go into panic attacks or anything like that, but after my Columbia rejection on Feb 2nd, and after not being part of the first wave of interviews for Wharton on Feb 4th, I was really down. I knew that I’d have two more chances on Feb 11 and Feb 18, but I figured 50% of the interviews went out on the 4th, 25% will go on the 11th, and 25% in 18th (this is just a guess). So then after I got passed up on the 11th again, I figured 40% of the remaining 25% of applicants will get an interview, which meant I had a 10% chance of getting an interview. It was down to that and a 11% chance of getting into Berkeley.
At this point, I did a couple things. I read my essays again, and I thought I could have done a couple things better in one of the essays. I second guessed my decision to talk about an experience 7 years ago in the Army… perhaps I should have focused on something more recently. And I could have done a better job of showing how I weighed my opportunities there (question was about declining an opportunity). But on the other hand, I thought that the Army was a unique experience for me and taught me a lot of things that other corporate employees wouldn’t have at this level. So I was still cautiously optimistic, but I began to have doubts. Maybe I’m not good enough.
I was somewhat upset at this point. I remember talking to a few investment bankers who got in to Columbia and UPenn such as my former roommate, and I remembered that their real reason for business school was very superficial. “I work a ton right now and I could use a 2 year break.” “I intend on working in a hedge fund. If I fail, then I can easily go to another fund with an MBA. Without an MBA, it’s not as easy.” Of course they did not say that in their “Why MBA?” essays. They would instead write something like, “I want to change the world” or “I want to found fund and I can’t do it without an MBA.”
I felt that the MBA schools were doing a horrible job of letting in people that really need it. And I felt it was pretty unfair that Harvard MBA, for example, would say something like, “we train leaders.” Really? You’re gonna teach someone to become a leader by teaching them accounting? Hell no. Do you really need to be a great leader to become a fund manager? Hell no. Really, all schools, MBA or not, are interested in people who will become great at what they do, because it helps their social and political impact and because it helps their endowment programs. I would quantify it this way. If someone is already at a 90% in terms of success at their future roles, let’s say, and an MBA is going to push that up to 95%, they’d rather have that than someone who is at a 50% without an MBA and will end up with a 90% with an MBA. Meaning, they care less about the magnitude of an impact that an MBA will have in someone’s likelihood for success, and care more about individuals who will do well regardless of an MBA program. Meanwhile, they’ll take all the credit for it by saying, “Harvard MBA’s Leadership Initiative trained X, Y, and Z CEOs.” Yeah, their courses in finance really made the difference, because they couldn’t possibly have learned that at their local community colleges.
So I was pretty upset at this point, as I figured I had a 10% chance of an interview at UPenn, and 11% chance of getting into Berkeley. So as my percentages dwindled (I was starting to beat myself up for not doing as well on my Columbia essays), I thought about what else I would do if I didn’t get in.
One thing that I am very appreciative of the MBA application process is the same thing that made me hate it: it’s rigorous and requires a lot of systematic self reflection. The “what matters most to you and why?” Stanford question took me a full year to answer, but it helped me identify an answer that I could not have done in a simple one day introspection. And it also helped me determine how I can apply the skills I’ve acquired in the past to bridge my future goals. So I came up with a few alternatives outside of an MBA program.
1. Get married. Raise a family. Figure it’s good enough to progress as far as my bachelor’s degree will take me. Hop around different companies. Be happy with what I’ve got. But more importantly, be satisfied with what I’ve got.
+ I would have more time with my family.
+ I don’t have to worry so much about pursuing higher and higher goals.
– I don’t want to be complacent.
– Who the hell would marry me right now? Who the hell would I marry right now?
2. Stay at my current company.
+ I really, really like my bosses.
+ I’ve already spoken to my current bosses about what I would do if I didn’t get an MBA, such as pursuing interests in other industries. They’ve expressed interest in wanting to keep me around by getting me more involved in a new role in operations and business intelligence.
– I want to go into a social industry and staying at my current company doesn’t accomplish that.
– I want to move from Westchester. There is no activity in this county, spiritually or professionally.
3. Get my Certified Financial Analyst designation (CFA).
+ It would make me more marketable for other finance jobs in the future.
– It would be really marketable for jobs in investment banking or venture capital, but I can’t really get into those industries without an MBA right now.
4. Jump into the social sector now. (Proinspire).
+ Instead of waiting, I can get into those sectors now instead of waiting after I get my MBA.
– The impact I have will be limited. Someone else with similar work experience and interests but with an MBA will pass me by really quickly.
5. Pursue Masters in Divinity.
+ I’ve grown much more spiritually recently. I’ve begun the quest to finish the Bible cover to cover. I didn’t use round 1 of the application process because I was busy being the coordinator for the Carnegie Hall event, which left me with only 1 round to apply for. But I feel that it’s worth it, even if I don’t get in this year. I’ve committed to my spiritual life and I feel that my recent decisions reflect my commitment. This isn’t a “what else can I do with my life, let me see if M.Div does anything” case.
+ I want to be a spiritual leader in my family, in my church, and at work.
+ Looking at the list of core classes I would need to take, I’m actually intrigued by almost all of them. (not too excited about learning languages, as I didn’t do so well with Spanish).
– I would feel like I just wasted the last 6 years of my life, 4 years professional and the last 2 years of college.
– I like being in business. I feel that I’m good at it, too. I just want a more operations/managerial experience in a different sector, and less of financial analyst role.
Complementary option in addition to all the above:
Apply to other MBA schools for next year’s class.
+ I would save a bit more money to pay for it.
+ I can work on getting my CFA designation.
+ I can get other experiences in my company or other companies.
+ It would help me grow spiritually in an academic sense if I pursue M.Div.
+ Maybe I could even apply to Harvard.
– I’m not as high on schools I haven’t applied to yet.
– I don’t want to wait another year. I’ll be 28 then, on the higher end of averages. 27 is more of an average age.
– I feel that I can grow spiritually in an intellectual academic setting with other spiritual people. I can’t do that right now in Westchester very easily.
– Milal Missionary Choir is great, but a couple things are going on right now that I feel would be a good time for me to leave now.
– I can’t go to Italy this year for a mission.
– I can’t imagine being a much better applicant next year than I am this year. It might be another year of the same old.
So as you can see, it’s a huge roller coaster ride, and a complicated one, too. Weighing the pros and cons of several parallel universes isn’t a very fun thing to do, especially when the alternatives aren’t as attractive, I think, as getting an MBA. But this whole MBA application process has done a couple things for me.
1. I identified what matters most to me.
Answering Stanford’s question helped me what matters most to me in a mental sense. That in turn helped me do the next thing on the list.
2. I identifed what I want to do in the mid-term to long-term.
3. I identified the fact that spirituality is very important to me now. I’ve grown a lot in my commitment, and it determines what I do with my life and the decisions I make.
4. I learned to be thankful with what I’ve got.
5. I learned to trust God. I remember sitting in my boss’s office, lamenting my MBA college rejections, and he said, “you put your best foot forward, and that all you can do.” And he’s right. I did the best that I could, and the rest is really in God’s hands.
6. And perhaps most importantly, I realized that I am nothing without God. All this time I was saying, “I did this, I did that.” And I realized that I may have done that physically, but I would not have been capable of doing any of that without God. This realization doesn’t really change the fact that I can say that, but it does change the mentality in which I say that.
So why do I want to go get an MBA?
I did a hypothetical test to really drill down on what kind of life I would prefer in the future.
1. MBA or owning .01% of a company like House Party that grows into a multi-billion dollar company? (The latter)
2. MBA if I win the Lotto? (No. I would probably create a couple companies instead).
3. MBA or M.Div.? (MBA. I’ve spent the last 6 years in something that I enjoy and feel that I’m good at. However, getting both isn’t out of the question.)
4. MBA or being a successful serial entrepreneur and going into social venture capital in the future? (The latter).
Money in of itself doesn’t mean a whole lot to me personally. Looking at the way I live, I don’t feel like I am a too materialistic guy. But answering these questions for myself, I realized that the one thing that’s consistent is what I’m really after: being a person of influence, a person of impact. I have a lot of ideas for things I want to do in the future, and I feel that outside of great personal wealth, an MBA is going to help me being a person of influence. And influence in terms of bridging the gap between the perceived mutually exclusive relationship between success and spirituality.
So I feel that this whole waiting process was really helpful in identifying what really matters to me, in setting me up for other opportunities in the future, in helping me determine that I need to trust God, that I am nothing without God, and that I need to be thankful with what I’ve got. And why I want an MBA.
+ I want to move into an intellectual community that will help me transfer my work experience thus far to a different industry.
+ I want to become a person of influence in the long-term.
+ I want to use the next 2 years in a different setting that is much more susceptible to spiritual growth than what I have now.
+ I have some feeling of unfinished business from my undergraduate. I want to really take advantage of 2 years of an academic experience to round out my skill-set for any opportunity in the future.
On Friday, February 18th, I found out that I was invited for an interview with UPenn. Even if I don’t get accepted, I am grateful for this really rigorous process that taught me a lot about myself. Of course, I’m hoping that I do get accepted.